Now I don’t want to go off the deep end here, but when I use my powers of analysis, I’m beging to wonder if there isn’t some pattern to a lot of what we see in ads, the media, and entertainment. If I were the paranoid sort, I’d be proclaiming some vast, secularist conspiracy. But when a pattern reoccurs often enough, it becomes difficult to ignore what can only be explained away as some kind of massive coincidence.

There’s a new movie coming out this week – Hamlet 2. It’s being marketing as a comedy. Apparently, those who have seen it in advance screenings are saying that it’s 1) incredibly bad, 2) extraordinarily anti-Christian, and 3) not at all funny. I can name a number of other things that could legitimately claim an identical description – say, for instance, the late, unlamented Book of Daniel, which lasted all of about two episodes on NBC.

Most fare that flaunts a jones for bashing Christians and/or Christianity is a lot more subtle. Watch an episode of virtually any prime time fare. If there’s a Christian character, dollars to donuts they’ll be a hypocrite, a letch, a drunk, a phillanderer, or just a narrow-minded, bigoted idiot.

It’s not just Christians and Christianity that are in the crosshairs of pop culture. Fatherhood (when was the last time you saw a show where a father was portrayed as loving, wise, and a leader?), chastity, femininity, hard work, intelligence, fidelity, marriage, tradition, or any of the other so-called “family values.” Don’t believe me? I challenge you to name a show that portrays any of these values in a postive light. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

One school of thought is that the media and entertainment are merely reflections of our society. Somehow, I don’t think so. I hold that they are the trendsetters, and that society follows blindly where the media and entertainment take us.

Another idea is that it’s simply ‘giving the people what they want.’ It may be true that nobody every went broke underestimating the taste of the general public, but that doesn’t make it a wise course of action, nor does it make for a sustainable business model. The problem with relying on pandering to the lowest of the low, is that there is only just so low that you can go. Eventually, four-letter words lose their shock value. Unclothed females no longer merit gawking. and trashing someone’s beliefs becomes an exercise in boredom. How you gonna keep ‘em watchin’ the tube, when they’ve already seen everything?

In one of Ayn Rand’s masterworks, The Fountainhead, a creative type was in a literal battle for his own survival against a newspaper columnist dedicated to obliterating any and everything remarkable or superior. The book’s antagonist, Ellsworth Toohey, is a collectivist, who makes socialism his religion, and the destruction of individualism his mission. Toohey uses the power of the press and public opinion to manipulate the media and the public to literally support mediocrity and condemn talent.

I wonder if The Fountainhead was more prophecy than fiction. It seems to me that media and entertainment conglomerates worship at the altar of mediocrity, and go to great lengths to trivialize anything that is truly outstanding. The thing is, I haven’t figured out why. Is there some vast plot afoot? Are media moguls unwitting stooges or active participants? Is the public being slowly but surely turned into “sheeple” that will accept anything, no matter how lame, as “good”? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it’s something that worries me. For when we value the collective over the individual, and trade remarkable for mediocre, there is nothing separating us from the worker-bee drones of the worldwide hive.